Allerseelen Interview Heaven Street (4, 2007)

  http://www.myspace.com/heavenstreet  

What's the meaning of Allerseelen's name?

It is German for All Souls Day, a dark day in November. It is the Day of the Dead when the dead are allowed to return to earth. I chose the name Allerseelen many years ago because I liked the sound of the word and its significance - the unity of the living and the dead at a certain time of the year. In my youth I was fascinated by death and all its alchemical emblems and symbols, and on the early Allerseelen cassettes which we recently re-released on the Austrian label Ahnstern on the DoLPs Archaische Arbeiten (Archaic Works) and Heimliche Welt (Hidden World) I used quite often the sounds of bones and ravens, united with the sounds of kettle-drums and violins. For both vinyl releases I used beautiful photos of stones in the Austrian mountains, of menhirs in Korsika, of ancient cemeteries in Northern Spain. I am interested a lot in prehistory, I love dolmens, menhirs, cromlechs, and all these places are in a close connection with death. I also recorded one or two years ago a cover version of the famous Richard Strauss song Allerseelen for the Allerseelen DoLP Sturmlieder (Storm Songs). I consider Allerseelen as a sacred marriage of death and life, a sacred marriage of many contraries, a union of opposites. Allerseelen is also the day when Pier Paolo Pasolini was killed - I love his films Edipo Re and Medea which deal a lot with ancient cultures and death.

Do you remember which was the first record you bought and which one was the most influential during your youth?

I remember this very well: The first record I bought was the Throbbing Gristle 10" Discipline. I still love this powerful rhythm and maybe one day Allerseelen will record a cover version of this song. I bought it together with the very industrial SPK LP Information Overload Unit. The most influential song was definitely Mussolini by DAF: I fell in love with its martial and elementary and spartanic beauty. I still love its simplicity. Of course I was also fascinated by the provocation in the text. Music is a real power. It changed me so much. As influential as the music were the interviews that I read with Genesis P-Orridge and Gabi Delgado. All their statements inspired me a lot. One of my eternal favourite records is definitely Mission of Dead Souls, the last live recording by Throbbing Gristle. I also love the design of this LP.

Describe us the first Allerseelen years (1989-1991) and tell us about the tape-based industrial scene of Wien (Nekrophile Rekords) and Europe that time. How do you feel now about your old releases?

I still love my old recordings and I am glad that these old releases were published as DoLPs. Vinyl is definitely the perfect medium for this dark chamber music. It was an intense time. I was spending a lot of time in photocopy shops as I was already working on my Aorta magazines. I spent a lot of time recording songs with three cassette recorders - at the time of my cassette releases I did not even own a 4-track-recorder. I only had this when I worked on my first two CDs Cruor and Gotos=Kalanda. I am not very often listening to these old soundtracks. They are like a diary and I do not really like to read too often in my old diaries.. But I am not really sure now if these diaries are really my old diaries or those of someone else.  It is the music of a Kadmon who is no longer alive: Kadmon is dead and at the same time he is alive in me like a small twin brother. I know that I recorded them - but in some way these are songs by someone else. So I could also consider these songs as the songs by someone who is dead or by someone who is or who was my twin brother. Listening to these recordings is like another Day of the Dead. Sometimes I use some of these ancient sounds and work on them to use them for contemporary songs. Since the day I was using the name Allerseelen for my work, I have to experience this day every day of my life. I was quite inspired by Zero Kama. I learnt a lot from my months in a close contact with the founder of this project. I concentrated on alchemy and magic and meditation. I loved this cassette culture and fanzine culture. It was a complete underground movement. Something like this would be completely impossible today - nowadays all this exists as blogs and pages in the www. But it is very different to hold in hand a real magazine like Heaven Street (even if I am not read only some words) or to watch the Heaven Street my space page on the www.

I think "Neuschwabenland" was a turning point for Allerseelen, bringing the new "military pop" sound. Do you agree? How this came about?

I created the term military pop as it describes well the blend of martial rhythms and quite melodic tunes in some of my works, especially on the disc Neuschwabenland with its cold atmospheres. I do not think that there is something like a complete freedom in the work of the artist. I very often consider the artist to be only a tool or even a toy of his work. So I do not think that it was me suddenly changing my style. I started working at this time with some other musical equipment which allowed me to create longer loops. I was also listening to other music. Neuschwabenland was a turning point but maybe everything started already with the CD before, Stirb und Werde (Die and Become). Neuschwabenland was the beginning of concentrating completely on music. Before this decision - which maybe was my decision or maybe the much stronger decision of my work - I had dedicated one day to music and one to my writings. When I stopped publishing my magazines Aorta and Ahnstern I was glad to have at a sudden twice as much time to spend on the music.. All the energy and enthusiasm, all the patience and passion were suddenly concentrated in my music. This definitely helped a lot to give birth to new songs which were much more dynamic and much more intense. I was also concentrating much more on the lyrics. Neuschwabenland which deals with a German colony in Antarctica is a myth, a modern utopia that is close to many ancient tales about emperors sleeping in mountains. At winter solstice we will release the DoLP Neuschwabenland with a complete new stunning artwork and several exclusive songs that I recorded in the last months.

 You like to travel and discover a lot around the world, always searching for hidden secrets amongst the ruins. Which are the most powerful places you have been visiting in our continent? How these journeys affect Allerseelen?

I do not know which are the most powerful places which I visited. Maybe some mountains where I was alone. I always love cold mountain lakes - they are for me like eyes which allow the mountains to see. In winter these eyes are closed with snow, in spring they are opening slowly. Maybe they are the eyes of the kings sleeping in the mountains. I feel very often like a troubadour visiting castles and the ruins of castles. Also I like to take beautiful photographs - a passion which is another strong motivation to wander around. I think that the way, the quest for something is much more essential than the destination. Some of the most powerful places were definitely those when I was alone for nights in the Cathar castles of South France where I was spending the nights alone in my sleeping bag, alone with my emotions. I also spent this summer solstice alone in the Heidentor, the Heathen Gate, close to Wien. This was an intense experience. To be alone somewhere is very important to get to know the genius loci of a place. Most fairy tales and legends with their magical experiences start with a single boy or girl going alone into a wood. All my magical mystery tours are affecting me, inspiring Allerseelen. Sometimes it is very easy to hear these influences in my music like the Flamenco tunes that I used quite a lot some years ago after all my magical mystery tours to various parts of Spain. An Allerseelen song about a megalithic monument in Portugal and an Allerseelen song about a megalithic monument in Denmark will have various things in common - but they also have to be different due to the quality of the landscape inspiring the recording. It is always the content, the motive that demands a specific character, a specific quality of sound. Sometimes my music may sound very Nordic, sometimes very Mediterranean, sometimes very Slavic. Austria itself is a synthesis of these apparent opposites - German and Roman and Slavic influences. And I too feel in my blood all these influences. In the last months I was travelling various times to Bulgaria so it is possible that these travels will inspire more or the music of Allerseelen.

It seems you like changes in your life, from Kadmon to Gerhard, from Aorta to Ahnstern. What's the significance of these changes?

Maybe the changes like me.. These changes occur as life is a field of force. I consider my life and my art as a magical mystery tour which is always full of changes. I am wandering, impatiently and patiently at the same time, because I am searching for beautiful and powerful places and landscapes. Each page I wrote, each song I published changed myself and changed in some way also the world around me. They are like doors or windows. Some Allerseelen concerts - Vienna, Venezia, Yverdon - have very much changed my life. Change is definitely something constant in the work of Allerseelen and as the only thing which is constant in life is change I am very positive that by these eternal changes Allerseelen will become eternal too. I love the idea that one day it is possible that Allerseelen also exists without me. One could consider all the texts, the lyrics, the songs as the sheddings of a serpent, like old skins that a serpent left behind on its way to a sacred place, a sacred spring or cave. Do I really love changes? I like the simple and sincere way I live now, I love the way how Allerseelen records and live performances come into existence. Everything is happening on a small scale, most people I am working with are good comrades and friends. More success would definitely change this. It would make my life busier. I would have less time for the music. So at the moment I prefer not to have too many changes in my life. It is very simple and beautiful the way it is now.

What exactly was the Die Weisse Rose project you participated last April at the Triumvirat Festival?

So far I performed two times with Die Weisse Rose - in Yverdon in Switzerland and in September in Alphen in the Netherlands. The live performances were great, in Yverdon also Marco of Foresta di Ferro was on stage. Die Weisse Rose is the group of Thomas from Denmark, his page on my space explains more the mysteries behind the group - maybe. I am just one of the drummers so I cannot really explain what the symbol of the white rose means for the group. It does not only refer to the German resistance group during the second world war. There is one song which I love very much due to its intense and hypnotic beauty: Kyrie Eleison. Some weeks ago I also recorded my voice for another song named Der Hauch der Ahnen (The Breath of the Ancients)  at a small Viennese cemetery close to the tombstone of a famous Austrian occultist - the genius loci of this place definitely influenced a lot the quality of my voice. This recording was another strong experience - it was not me or it was not me alone recording this. I was again the tool in a field of force.

Tell us about your future plans on concerts, releases etc.

At the end of October the split CD Barco Do Vinho (Wine Boat) was released on Ahnstern. This CD contains exclusive songs by Sangre Cavallum and Allerseelen. Sangre Cavallum used my voice for one song, and I used the voice of Rangel, the bagpiper of Sangre Cavallum, for one of my songs. All the songs deal with wine. In North Portugal we recorded a lot of sounds connected with wine and some of these noises we used for our songs. In November the split CD Men among the Ruins with Changes and Allerseelen came out on Indiestate in Russia. On this release two of the Allerseelen songs feature female Russian vocals by Drynwhyl. We will soon publish the next Allerseelen DoLP Neuschwabenland with some additional songs. For the next months I will be busy with recordings for all the other Allerseelen DoLPs we are working on. This is of course a lot of work but I am full of energy and enthusiasm and I am glad to work on this challenge. Art is always something magical and magnetical and it is always full of mysteries, probably most of the mysteries are experienced by the artist himself: Sometimes I start a quite happy song and it turns finally into a strange and dark requiem song. Sometimes it is the other way round, I feel the desire to record something very dark and gloomy and at the end it turns out very colourful and mediterranean. I love this. It is a challenge. I really feel like the tool of my songs. There are various concerts planned but at the moment there is nothing fixed so far.

Do you think Allerseelen achieved what they intended to? What's left for them?
There is still a lot to do as Allerseelen is a mission impossible.
"The price of existence is eternal warfare" (Coil)

Michalis E